BGSF, Inc. (BGSF)
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Apr 29, 2026, 9:31 AM EDT - Market open
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Earnings Call: Q4 2022

Mar 9, 2023

Operator

Good morning, everyone, welcome to the BGSF Inc Fiscal 2022 Fourth Quarter and Full Y ear Financial Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute for the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for question and answer at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn you over to Sandy Martin, Three Part Advisors. Please go ahead.

Sandy Martin
Managing Director, Three Part Advisors

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the BGSF 2022 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Conference Call. With me on the call today are Beth Garvey, Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Hollenbach, Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. As noted, today's call is being webcast live. A replay will be available later today and also archived on the company's investor relations page. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions made by BGSF under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements because of various risks and uncertainties, including those listed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Management statements are made as of today, March 9th, 2023. The company assumes no obligation to update these statements publicly even if new information becomes available in the future. During the call, management will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which can be useful in evaluating the company's operations related to the financial condition and results. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement GAAP financial information and should not be considered a substitute. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures are provided in today's earnings press release. I'll now turn the call over to Beth Garvey. Beth?

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Thank you, Sandy. Thank you for joining us today for our year-end 2022 earnings discussion. I'm very pleased to report record revenues in 2022 of $298 million, a strong 24.8% increase over 2021, and full year adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS were up 45% and 47% respectively over prior year period. As a reminder, we divested our light industrial segment during the first quarter of 2022. We believe this more fully aligns with our core strategy of building higher margin work in consulting, managed service, and workforce solutions. During 2022, we successfully launched the company's integrated IT technology platform, which we know is foundational to our plans to create significant long-term value for our business. I will speak more about this in a few moments.

We've had a very busy and productive year. I would like to recognize and thank all of our BGSF team members and their commitment and diligence last year. Our teams worked together with purpose, persistence, and perseverance to complete our strategic directives in 2022, and they deserve the credit for our operational and financial successes. While I am discussing our teams, I also want to share that we have continued to build on a strong bench our culture and our talent development. As announced earlier this week, we are making a CFO transition later this month, and I want to welcome John Barnett as our incoming Chief Financial Officer. John brings strong finance leadership capabilities with deep experience working in public and private companies, and his leadership style fits well with our BGSF culture.

Dan will be working with John in transitioning his CFO duties, and I look forward to having John join this call in a couple of months to discuss our Q1 results. I also want to take a moment to thank Dan Hollenbach for his tremendous contributions to our organization. Everyone in our organization is grateful to him for his dedicated leadership as a CFO role in 2015. Additionally, we have continued to strengthen our leadership bench in many ways. In November of 2022, we added Melissa Phillips as our Chief Digital Officer. Melissa is a strong leader in sales and digital delivery, and she is responsible for lead generation enablement on BGSF sales and recruiting technical platform. Tech-enabled lead generation is a valuable component of our growth initiatives for 2023 and beyond. Early in 2023, we moved Chris Loope into the important role of Chief Strategy Officer.

Chris is a visionary leader in business transformation and growth. He has been responsible for championing BGSF's IT innovation platform as we scaled our businesses. Chris is providing project management leadership for company strategic initiatives and is also defining the structure and process for our important M&A work. We also promoted Nycole Rosen to our position of Chief Information Officer. Nycole joined our company in 2019 and was instrumental in the success of our IT roadmap journey. Today, we believe that our current IT tech staff, as well as our digital tools and resources, are distinct competitive advantages for our company. The successful implementation of our strategic initiatives three years ago has positioned us for growth and value creation in 2023 and beyond. Before I turn the call over to Dan, I want to cover a couple of strategic initiatives that we are working on.

During the second quarter, we plan to rebrand all of our businesses to BGSF. We know that the power of maximizing our reputation by going to market as BGSF gives us traction on cross-selling efforts, and we have seen evidence of this on professional side during a soft launch of our renaming in 2022. Dan and I will provide more details on that in a few minutes. I want to comment on Horn Solutions acquisition that we closed in December of 2022. We have known the Horn leadership team for many years, and this was a natural fit for our business. With annual revenues of $30 million, this company was a sizable acquisition for us, which adds to top line starting in 2023.

As we previously discussed, Horn is a good strategic fit because it builds on high value consulting and managed service businesses in the finance and accounting sector. We envision expanded market share in terms of geographic footprint as well as new client partners and significant cross-sell prospects. This business has also demonstrated a track record of double-digit growth rates, excellent EBITDA returns, and industry leading margins. Financially, this transaction was immediately accretive to our business and is also benefiting our BGSF team members and our customers. I will turn the call over to Dan. After he covers our financial results for the quarter and the year, I will come back and discuss our business outlook for 2023 and mission critical initiatives that we are working on. Dan.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Thank you, Beth. Good morning, everyone. This is my final earnings call as the CFO of BGSF. Some might jump for joy not having to do these calls anymore. However, it is with deeply mixed emotions that I will be leaving my post as CFO of this great organization. It has truly been an honor and privilege to have served in this role since mid-2015, and I look forward to helping the transition with John and the team as the company starts a new chapter in its strategic growth plan. Today, I'll be discussing results based on the earnings release filed last night. Our annual report on Form 10-K will be filed next Wednesday. I will also be using the term Property Management Real Estate to describe that segment.

As Beth mentioned, we sold our light industrial segment in early 2022, our financial results are discussed as continuing operations and except where noted, exclude discontinued operations for this year and last year. Now for the numbers. Fourth quarter revenues were up 14.2% to $77.3 million. By segment, Property Management grew 16.6% and Professional increased 8.9% on an organic basis. Horn Solutions contributed $1.4 million of revenue in December for three weeks. Professional wage rates increased 17%, while Property Management wage rates increased 10% quarter-over-quarter. Permanent placement revenues remained consistent. As we expected, our Q4 revenues returned to more normalized patterns in 2022 and declined sequentially coming off a strong COVID recovery quarter a year ago.

Between Q3 and Q4, Professional was essentially flat due to more ends in December of this year versus last year and the deferment of some managed services projects into late Q1 and Q2 of 2023. Property Management was down 4% as expected. We continue to see solid demand in projects related to cloud migration, ERP selection and implementation, as well as customizations. Fourth quarter gross profit dollars increased by 15.5% compared to the prior year quarter to $27.1 million. Professional was up 7.6% on an organic basis, and Property Management up over 17%. As a percentage of revenue, total gross profit margin increased by 40 basis points to a strong 35%. Compared to a year ago quarter, Selling General and Administrative expenses were $23.2 million compared to $16.5 million last year.

The increase was driven by $4 million of annualized headcount costs for new roles, primarily in the second half of the year, associated with strategic investments for internal talent to support known projects and fuel future growth plans. The additions for Property Management relate to the return of the commercial business post-COVID as well as planned growth in multi-family this year. In addition, the fourth quarter of 2021 included a $2 million CARES Act credit. We recorded M&A deal cost of $265,000 and bonus accruals and other year-end reserves of approximately $500,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022 over 2021.

Fourth quarter net income from continuing operations was $1.4 million or $0.14 per diluted share, compared with net income of $4.3 million or $0.41 per diluted share a year ago, which included a net CARES credit of $1.6 million or $0.15 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 was $4.3 million or 5.6% of revenues, compared to $5.1 million or 7.5% of revenues in 2021. Although revenues and gross profit margins grew year-over-year, as mentioned, we invested in people to drive growth in 2023, which impacted our actual and adjusted EBITDA margins in Q4 of 2022. Our effective Q4 tax rate was 33% for 2022 compared with 24.3% in last year's fourth quarter.

As Beth mentioned, for the year, we reported record 2022 revenues of $298.4 million, up 24.8%, while gross profit was $103.5 million, up 27.9%. Property Management revenues grew 31.6%, with professional up 19.7% organically. Our managed services division, led by our Momentum Solutionz acquisition in 2021, doubled in size during the year. Permanent placement revenues were up 13.5% year-over-year. Our gross profit percent increased 80 basis points to 34.7% in 2022. Property Management grew 36.4%, with professional up 19.8% organically. SG&A cost as a percentage of sales grew 60 basis points this year compared with last year.

A detail of our 2022 versus 2021 SG&A cost is included in the MD&A section of our annual report on Form 10-K. Net income from continuing operations was $11.3 million, or $1.07 per diluted share, compared to $10.5 million, or $1.00 per diluted share for the 2021 period. Benefiting 2021 were two things: a $1.9 million net gain on contingent consideration and a $1.7 million CARES credit. Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations totaled $21.7 million or 7.3% of revenue compared to $15 million or 6.3% of revenue last year. Finally, the full-year effective tax rate from continuing operations was 23.1% for 2022 compared to 20.1% a year ago.

Regarding the company's financial position, we continue to maintain a strong liquidity position and balance sheet. At the end of Q4, our accounts receivables grew to $66.3 million, driven by our growth and addition of Horn Solutions. While day sales outstanding remained consistent with the end of Q3 and our working capital ratio strengthened to 2.7 during 2022, we continued to invest in our IT roadmap and return capital to our shareholders through the dividend program. Our banking leveraged ratio of funded debt to trailing 12 months pro forma adjusted EBITDA moved to 2.4 x due to the Horn Solutions acquisition. As Beth mentioned, the company's board of directors recently approved management's plan to rebrand all of our businesses to BGSF, which eliminates the various trade names currently in use. It is management's intent to complete this rebranding by the end of Q2.

The decision to rebrand creates an indication of impairment classified as indefinite life intangible assets. The company has not been advertising the carrying values. There is no cash impact or any adjustment to amortization expense related to the suspected impairment. As we have said previously, we believe our prudent financial management and capital allocation strategy are sufficient to provide ample flexibility to fund operations, invest for our future growth, and return value to shareholders through cash dividends and stock appreciation. I will now turn the call back to Beth.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Thank you, Dan. Fiscal 2022 was a transformational year for our company. Now we have transitioned to enhancements and continuous improvements on our IT roadmap. In addition, our strategic M&A work, including our divestiture of InStaff completed in 2022, has allowed our company to grow in more high-value, high-margin businesses like consulting and managed services on the Professional side. Finally, we continue to expand our MultiFamily solutions into six North American cities during 2022 and adding our first Canadian office in Toronto. Late in 2022, we began to experience advancement in our commercial Real Estate or Property Management solutions, which we knew would be slow to recover after the pandemic. Now I would like to comment about our IT roadmap initiative a bit further.

Our technology modernization project that went live last year was built to scale BGSF growth plans to support a billion-dollar revenue company. We have identified efficiencies that allow us to grow faster while reducing overall costs and risk in cyber and other regulatory and ESG related ways. We are also tracking ROI metrics this year against our IT roadmap investment and are beginning to capture both hard dollar and soft dollar cost savings. For example, we are saving annual software costs of approximately $350,000 and believe that we will capture north of 5% gross profit benefit from our IT modernization efforts. Over the next two years, we have set aggressive goals in accordance with our new strategic growth plans.

We believe the successful implementation of these initiatives are important table stakes to reach the next level of growth and to capture meaningful share in a highly competitive marketplace. Said another way, these goals and objectives are foundational for our long-term sustainable growth and value creation. Today, I plan to define these four initiatives, and I will continue to update you as the years progress. First, process improvement. Before our IT roadmap, we believe there are processes were either very good or adequate. Based on the work we did during our IT systems upgrades, we learned that there are much better and more efficient ways to do many things. We want to institutionalize best practices and processes in many areas. Secondly, shared services.

An efficient and effective shared service platform will allow us to remove back-office tasks and responsibilities from our recruiting and sales efforts, reduce risks, and realize significant cost synergies along the way. Our primary target with the shared service platform is to efficiently scale the business and eliminate non-revenue producing tasks from our two segments. Third, mergers and acquisitions and organic growth. Although we have reported strong growth over the past several years, we know that the comparisons or comps will continue to get tougher. We have a well-defined plan for both organic and acquisition growth and now must execute on those plans. We plan to open new markets in Real Estate segment and leverage technology to create territory mapping to expand and grab more market share in 2023. We are encouraged by the growth prospects of both of our segments.

In our Real Estate or Property Management segment, we see pent-up demand in MultiFamily as well as the return to work trends in commercial. For professional, consulting work continues to be very specialized, which we believe are based on long-term secular growth trends in IT transformation, finance and accounting, and cybersecurity. We are well-positioned in all of these areas. Fourth, branding as BGSF. As I alluded to earlier, the power of consolidating our name, offices, and more importantly, our voice in the marketplace will allow us to gain traction in new markets. Eliminating the confusion of going to market in multiple names will benefit everyone, our clients, our consultants, and our skilled talent. This is a foundational to our business, and we believe that our BGSF brand power and brand recognition is important, especially as we expand in high-value professional consulting and managed services.

Our Real Estate segment for MultiFamily and commercial are very much tied to the confidence that our brand brings regarding skilled talent and augmented workforces. This is simple yet powerful pivot for us. We like that it does not cost us much to implement across our segments. In 2023, we are poised for another strong year at BGSF. With unemployment numbers at a 50-year low at 3.5% and college degreed unemployment numbers even lower at just 1.9%, we know that finding the right labor and talent will benefit from long-term secular growth trends. Finding people and then training and deploying the right talent is a key differentiator for us. I want to close today with some additional commentary on our strategy on M&A outlook. Although valuations have improved, we continue to be very selective.

As we have stated in the past, we want to add businesses that improve our margins and or solve a problem for our customers. One of the areas we continue to hear from our customers is the need for a nearshore or offshore talent. This is another potential opportunity for us. Our defined M&I criteria remains unchanged as we look for good DNA fit with our business in North America and or abroad. We require a strong fit for our customers and for our culture. We want good valuations with high margin businesses. With that, we will now open the call to your questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you, Beth. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. Our first question comes from the line of Howard Halpern of Taglich Brothers. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Congratulations, guys. Great year.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Thank you.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

In what, the Real Estate and Property Management, how many offices did you end the year in, and what kind of pace of openings or splits do you anticipate going forward?

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

We have a total of 64 markets right now that are active in Real Estate. We are targeting six new markets next year. We have four markets that we are going to be doing the territory mapping in.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Okay. That sounds good.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

That'd be great.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

In terms of, you know, what you've done to restructure a little bit for the you know, in the fourth quarter, that $4 million, is that gonna be the new the SG&A, is that the new baseline going forward, that $23 million, and then work off that number for modeling purposes?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Well, I think in that number, was about $765,000, part of it transactional fees, Howard.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Okay.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Which, you know, depending on M&A deals may continue or not, but, you know, it depends on what we have going in the pipeline. As mentioned, there was about $500,000 of sort of year-end sort of catch-up stuff that, you know, you just normally catch in the fourth quarter. Probably just south of $23 million might be your base.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Okay. That will cover the Horn operations too. You're gonna be able to absorb all that in there with that.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

I apologize for that. Yeah, that's That only has three weeks of Horn in it. When we chat this afternoon, I can give you an adjusted number on that. Yeah.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Okay. In, you know, in terms of the rebranding, what might the incremental cost be, at least in the first half of the year?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Are you saying, is there a cost of changing the name out?

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Right. Is it just gonna be the write-down that we're gonna see?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

It's. Yeah. I believe, from what I've heard, and we've had discussions, there's very minimal cost in terms of changing this. We already own the name. We're using BGSF a lot. So that's, i s that correct?

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

There's only a few things we'll be changing. We'll have to change some things when it comes to trade shows and some of our marketing material that we get pushed out, but it'll be minimal, and we budgeted for that.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Okay. in terms of the cross-sell opportunities with Horn and what's going on internally, what are you seeing, You know, and what are your people seeing in terms of the opportunities that are out there to even drive that further?

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

I think the team was super excited about Horn. Actually, both teams were excited. When we went down to visit the Horn team, it was probably one of our most energetic meetings with a new company we've ever acquired. They see the benefit of the cross-sell initiatives. A lot of members of our team knew the teams over at Horn. The energies and synergy just in getting to know each other, was immediate. I think that everyone is super excited, and they've already started cross-selling a lot, and introducing each other to each other's clients.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Okay. just one last one, more what you see in the landscape out there is, are you seeing more talent? Are you drawing more talent in and, you know, versus the projects that are out there? I guess what I'm getting at is, Are you seeing a more balanced market out there, or is it still tilted one way or the other?

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

It's still tilted. You know, it's just an interesting market out there right now. There's still a drive for people and there's, you know, it hadn't let up much. Even though there's a bunch of layoffs, it's not in where we play, so we're not getting a benefit from that side.

Howard Halpern
Principal Equity Analyst, Taglich Brothers

Okay. Okay, congratulations, and keep up the good work.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Thank you, Howard.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Martin of Roth Capital. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Jeff Martin
Co-director of Research and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital Partners

Thanks. Good morning. Dan, congratulations on your retirement. I wish you well. Hope you have a lot of fun and happy memories ahead of you. I guess just piggybacking off the SG&A question, is it fair to look at this as a 14-week quarter there for you back out 1/14 of that $23 million, which is more like $23 and a half million kinda run rate. Then you've got a couple items that you mentioned that, you know, Q1, you're gonna be half a million lower for the year-end catch-up on comp and then some transaction fees. We're actually closer probably to $20 million on a run rate basis, at least for Q1. Is that fair?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Yeah. Let's, I'd rather chat about that later on when we have our call, if you don't mind.

Jeff Martin
Co-director of Research and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital Partners

Yep. Yep.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Good.

Jeff Martin
Co-director of Research and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital Partners

Okay. Then, Beth, maybe speak to the longer-term opportunity strategically with Horn? I know they bring, you know, expanded capabilities, particularly on the consulting side. Maybe speak to, you know, kind of the end markets you're most excited about, and also, you know, the transition to geographic expansion and how that plays out over what timeframe.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Okay. Well, the one thing about Horn is they're located in Austin, Houston, and Dallas, the ability to be able to expand them in the other markets that we operate in will be very beneficial for us. The thing that we're most excited about it is they have such a strong Finance and Accounting group, it's high in consulting. What it really does is it completes another piece of our puzzle with our customers. When we go in and we help a customer pick what software they want, then we go in and help them implement the software that they get, then we help customize the software, and then with the Horn Solutions, we get to help them come in and do the reporting that comes out of the software.

It really does make the circle complete in regards to what we are able to do with the customer to keep them, a BGSF client versus having to go somewhere else to get those resources. That's the one thing that we're the most excited about because we were strong in F&A, but, Horn is three times larger than what we had in place already. Very good for us.

Jeff Martin
Co-director of Research and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital Partners

Okay. Then on the commercial side of Real Estate, maybe walk us through the transition 2022, if you saw pent-up demand coming. Trying to get a sense because it had, you know, MultiFamily or Real Estate in general had a very strong year. Looks like that was driven primarily by MultiFamily. you know, maybe give us a look at if that pent-up demand on the commercial side is unwinding.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

It is still in play right now. I know that there's still the return to work out there. In the fourth quarter, third and fourth quarter, we started to see more companies come back to work, which gave us an opportunity. We had consolidated that team within our MultiFamily group during COVID. As that started to break free and we started seeing people go back into the offices, we broke it back out. Once we did that, we put a manager over the entire group and then started backfilling positions so that we could get back into the market early as those things started to break.

I think that, as we moved into 2023, we are still seeing some cities across the U.S. that are ready to open up and get back to normal and some that still aren't. You know, it's not. The one thing about Real Estate we have learned is there's no wide sweep of what's going on. It's just pockets. Some pockets are doing better than others, and some pockets are growing, and some pockets are still holding on to deciding whether or not people are gonna go back to the office. We just have to be very aware of how we sell in those markets to be able to stay on top of it.

Going ahead and breaking that group out and allowing them to start getting the market early will be helpful for us in this year.

Jeff Martin
Co-director of Research and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital Partners

Yep. Okay. last question on the margin front. You've been very disciplined over the years. In terms of, you know, expanding gross margins, that's typically translated into very good EBITDA margins. Just curious, with the growth investments that you made, you know, in the back half of 2022, how should we think about EBITDA margins in 2023 relative to, you know, the last couple of years? Is it gonna take a little bit of time to digest those investments and see the longer-term benefit on the EBITDA margin side?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Well, we do see, you know, some leveraging of the costs that we spent over the last three years going into 2023 and 2024. Jeff, we anticipate a better EBITDA return as we move forward, as we leverage the people that we have, and grow faster than that SG&A cost, and leverage the cost that we put into the IT roadmap, so. I can't give you a specific percent, we do expect that to expand, yes, so.

Jeff Martin
Co-director of Research and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital Partners

Yep. Great. Congratulations on a good year, and Dan, again, wish you well in retirement. Congratulations.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Thanks, sir. Yeah, well, I'm not leaving yet.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

H e's not being set free yet.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Taglich of Taglich Brothers. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

Morning, guys, and congratulations, Dan.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Thanks, sir.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Morning, Mike.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

Thanks. I'm actually surprised at the explosion of SG&A. I mean, was this the plan to spend to have this kind of level of expenses?

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Well, I do think, Mike, that we had to. When we kinda paused our hiring when we went live on the systems at the end of June. In order for us to be able to go through and hit our numbers for 2023, we needed to be able to go ahead and get positions in place to be profitable, or not profitable, but to drive the sales and growth for 2023. It was a decision that was made to go ahead and move things forward or move things back so that we could be advanced and forward. I think that yes, it was part of the plan to answer in regards to the hiring part of it.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

How much of it was the hiring?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Oh, sorry. Michael, we did have the, you know, the wrap-up of the IT roadmap this year as well. That cost was anticipated.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

The fourth quarter was a dramatic increase in SG&A versus the three quarters before that. I mean, it's great sales are up and all that. Obviously, earnings are down, which is not the plan. It was part of plan or not? I mean, I was surprised that we didn't bring more to the bottom line. I wanna spend some time understanding that better.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

We did mention that in the managed services division, you know, b rought to us by Momentum, we had some delays in projects that was anticipated in November and December. Their numbers were lower than expected. There were ends on the IT side, higher than there were last year. You know, we had, again, we were sort of anticipating this year to be like last year, and we had more ends than we did last year. That affected November and December numbers. We had some adjustments in terms of year-end accruals. We had some transaction fees related to Horn.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

When you said, if I'm running a budget, should I assume it's gonna be SG&A $26.8 million plus an inflation factor? You're annualizing the fourth quarter?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

No.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

What should I assume it should be for, I mean, you guys have a budget for this coming year. I'm really surprised at the miss, but.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

You know, we prefer not to give those numbers out on the earnings call. Happy to have a follow-up call with you, Michael.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

Okay. Would you go into detail about the catch-up stuff? Was that under accruals, or what is that? Some expenses you weren't, or were just surprise expenses that just happened in Q4?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

We had some catch-up on bonus plans, where we had some kickers that came in, as people reached certain levels in their bonus plan that we picked up in Q4 versus picking up earlier in the year. We had some other expenses that came in.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

How much did that add up to?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

That was about just north of $200,000.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

Okay.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

We had just under $300,000 on some other accruals that we needed to adjust. We had the transaction fees related to Horn.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

You couldn't capitalize those transaction fees into the transaction?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Transaction fees are not capitalizable anymore, so no.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

Okay. All right. I'd love to see some of those.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Used to be under old GAAP, but not under new GAAP, so yeah.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

I'd love to see some of those, top line growth and gross margin growth is work that met the magical way where we get leverage on the bottom line, so.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

As we mentioned, we certainly are looking at next year and seeing expansion in the bottom, EBITDA percent, Michael.

Michael Taglich
Co-founder, President, and Chairman, Taglich Brothers

I hope so. Okay. All right. Thank you very much, and we'll talk offline.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, it is star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Daryl Davis, who is an investor. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Hey, Beth and Dan. Way to go on a successful 2022.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Thank you.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Thank you, Daryl.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Hey, Dan. Congratulations on your next step. Personally, your role at BGSF has been critical for me. When I assess management, the first quality I look at is integrity, and you have that, sir. Thank you very much, and I wish you the best. Hopefully you'll stick around longer than a year, in that transition.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Appreciate it, sir. Thank you.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Beth, speaking of the transition, the news release for Dan, I think it was described, the change was part of a transition plan. I think I missed that. Where is that plan?

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Dan, do you wanna address this?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

I'm sorry, Daryl, but.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Well.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Daryl, I don't know that it was published. We've been doing succession planning for a while. We always try to think about, you know, where leaders are and succession planning so that we are prepared. Dan has been open in saying that when he wanted to retire, I've known for a couple of years when he wanted to retire. We talked with the board and decided to go ahead and push forward in having the CFO search so that we would have long enough time to have the transition before Dan decided that it would be his last day. We worked backward on it, but we've known for a couple years that what his timeline was.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Gotcha. in your opening remarks, you mentioned the write-down for 2023. Can you specify what is being written down?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

That we're gonna write down this year? Yeah. When we buy the companies, we, you know, we allocate the purchase price to various things, primarily the customer list and the trade name that we're gonna use. That $22.5 million a re values that we've assigned to trade names over the, you know, last seven or eight or nine acquisitions, on the IT side, so.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Gotcha.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

So the V ision, the Zycron, the Smart, you know, all those, so.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Gotcha. Basically, the trade names for the past, seven, eight or nine, acquisitions.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Right.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

By the way, I'm a fan.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Correct. Yeah.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

I'm a fan of the single brand. I don't know if I'm right or wrong in that attitude, but I'm a fan of the single brand.

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

Thanks.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

I think this may have been, t his next question, I think, has been answered in a release, a few months ago. What were the revenues for Horn for 2022?

Dan Hollenbach
CFO, BGSF

They're about a $30 million company. Yeah.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Gotcha. Then, finally, Beth, here's the annual question. Looking back at 2,000 domains that were good and one or some of the actions y'all made that were not good.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

We had so many good things, Daryl. I mean, the fact that we're going live on our technology, I mean, that was a three-year journey that took us a little bit longer 'cause you threw in a pandemic in the middle of it. The fact that the whole company has all new technology, that it's all live right now, that is a major accomplishment for us. I would say that was a great thing. I'd say with the Horn acquisition was also a great thing. As far as when the bad things, I mean, let's call it fourth quarter's SG&A was a little bit of a hit. You know, we understand it, we know what happened, and we'll adjust for that going forward.

I think other than that, I think we've had, I think I'm very, very proud of our team and what we accomplished over the past year. I think we did a lot of revenue growth, GP growth while we went live on a system. I think that that shows so much about our team and the people at BGSF.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Thank you for that. Personally, obviously the SG&A for the Q4 jumps off the page. Also, also what jumps off the page is the revenue growth. You had gone out of your way to set expectations low for Q4, especially in Real Estate, because of the pent-up demand that you experienced in 2021 Q4. I'm not looking at the numbers, but it was an impressive comp year-over-year. I guess that compliment has a, has a question embedded in it. I'll just go ahead and make explicit. Was that Q4 that we just finished, the 2022 Q4, is there still pent-up demand from the eviction moratoriums? Are we done with, I mean, let's say if we're 1%, 2% or 3%, let's call that done.

Is there any real pent-up demand still?

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

I think it's mostly on the commercial side right now. I think the real estate MultiFamily side is back. I would say that the commercial side with the offices still, you know, this back to work discussion is still happening on a daily basis with companies. I think that once that all shakes out, that will help us. I think that's definitely still out there.

Daryl Davis
Shareholder, Private Investor

Got you. Well, thank you all so much.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Thanks, Daryl.

Operator

Thank you. As there are no additional questions waiting at this time, I'll pass the conference back over to Beth Garvey for closing remarks.

Beth Garvey
Chair, President, and CEO, BGSF

Thank you, Candice. Thank you for your time today, and we appreciate your continued support. We look forward to updating you on our first quarter results in a couple of months. Have a great day.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's BGSF fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call webcast. Have a great day ahead. You may now disconnect your lines

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